Lamidu Peuple

I don't doubt you had good service. A bad experience is always the exception. The fact that we were treated badly doesn't mean it is going to happen every time. They were fine with us for quite a while -- until they weren't. In my long experience (35 years or so in South London) you very rarely get good service from a garage in the long run. At first, they want your business and treat you well. After a couple of years though, they put unnecessary things on the bill, and then, before you know it, they are taking the p. Any oldish car, btw, will feel 'like new' when the tyres are blown up (usually too much, I find) and the brakes and steering tightened. Keep using them sure, but be alert.

A couple of years ago our car, serviced at Croxted Motors, spluttered and the engine died while we were coming to a halt at a service area off the M1. Incredible luck-- had it happened on the M1 we could have had a major crash. We couldn't get it started again. Called AA. The AA man asked if we had had it serviced recently (yes, at Croxted Motors for MOT) because the fault was that in replacing the spark plugs they had only been positioned in the cylinder head and not fully tightened all the way home and so the engine stopped working once the plugs had worked themselves loose after 60 miles on the M1. Croxted Motors man brushed it all off. Foolishly, we went back recently and got stung for a massive bill (just shy of ?600) even though I had specifically asked him to phone me if any items were going to be expensive. He claimed not to have been able to get through to me (bollocks) and went ahead anyway. More fool me. I was very angry and made a fair bit of noise. They returned the car to us, which had been having window problems, with the door studs not replaced, meaning the inside door panels were hanging off. Last week, another garage cured a misfiring problem we've had for a few weeks which had been bugging us for quite a while but which did not stop the car from working. It did make it hard to start. Anyway, there were a couple of problems there but one of the biggest was that at the last service, Croxted Motors had inserted the incorrect spec of spark plug when replacing them. I had not thought the plugs could be an issue with our misfiring since they were new, the plug cables were new and so on. Turned out they had made the problem. The manager there is totally shameless. I was spurred to write this because he had the nerve to leave a voicemail for me this morning reminding me that the MOT was due. Obviously he gets a lot of crap from angry customers but like me (once only, never again) still come back because they can't be bothered to go elsewhere.